At the Feb. 27 Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA) Summit in London, the leaders of the Content Localisation Council kicked off the event by celebrating the organization’s 10th anniversary.
The chairs of the council taking the stage included Julie Bénéteau, director of international sales, The Kitchen; Aaron Bhugobaun, technical production operations manager, Moonbug; Carlo DeCianti, head of sales, Plint; Dieter Imme, dubbing and digital media manager, Fremantlel; and Scott Rose, CTO, VSI
“I think I’m now in my 35th year of localization,” Rose said. “And I’ve been involved in technology the entire way and I think [the Council] is a great opportunity to spend some time with colleagues. You know, unless you are involved, oftentimes we can sort of hide in our [own] silos at work. But I think having a community to work with people is great.”
Bhugobaun said he’d been in the localization industry for nearly 15 years and called it a “very turbulent time in the industry. Not only our industry and industry, every industry as a whole.” He sees the integration of AI in localization as transformative, and as the technology progresses, it will change how humans have done everything at work previously.
“I think it’s been to have checks and balances between clients and vendors, you know, to see both sides of the coin and try to get the messaging across and, and have transparency between both parties to see what is the best way to walk,” said Plint’s DeCianti.
Speakers said AI is impacting every part of the pipeline, with one speaker quipping that “if you go on holiday for two weeks, you’re already out of date. That’s how quickly it’s moving.” Other speakers called it a technology arms race.
“The industry over the decades has gone through many ups and downs and they’re always different but they’re always recalibrating,” Rose said. “2024 had an incredible amount of disruption, even politically, certainly with the disruption of AI coming into the conversation more so than anything else. And I think that the universe hates a vacuum.
“I think that 2025 is the year in which we find firm ground and [see] where some of the dust has settled in some of the issues that we’ve dealt with in 2024. And we’re going to be able to make better decisions and be able to see more clearly how we move forward, even, you know, if it’s lower volumes, if there’s certain changes in companies and personnel and people. But it’s still, we still must understand, we still have to be able to see, see the light ahead.”
Speakers said AI has replaced people in many automatic functions but still hasn’t reached a point where it can replace humans in fully creative tasks.
“The one side saying everything is going to be AI in six months, which was a year ago, apparently, but everything is going to be only AI, no humans involved,” one speaker said. “To the other extreme of saying, oh, we’re going back to doing everything with pen and paper because that’s the only way to do localization. I hope we find a middle ground.”
The Content Localisation Council allows the media and entertainment industry to rally around the AI question — and any industrywide challenge — as a community, speakers agreed. The ability to tackle common problems is why the council was formed in the first place.
With the theme “Where AI and Localization Converge,” the Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA) Summit in London brought together the European community to talk about key trends, challenges and the future for the localization industry.
Attendees heard from subject matter experts, academics, content creators, creatives, and their service provider partners as they delve into issues around the industry landscape following a tumultuous period, including how artificial intelligence, voice technologies, and machine learning are playing an ever-more important role, and how the adoption of smart, targeted cloud-based solutions can help achieve greater workflow efficiencies.
The CDSA Summit London was sponsored by Papercup, Red Bee, Deluxe, EIDR, Iyuno, Tech Align Group, OOONA and Voiseed.
